Page 92 of Ruthless Creatures
I whistle for him. He trots up, ignoring Chris, and heads back inside, going into the house through the open door behind me.
Chris takes another step forward. I take a step back. The anger in his gaze makes my heartbeat tick up a notch and my eyes widen.
Then I get a whiff of the alcohol on his breath, and my pulse ticks up higher.
Alarmed, I say, “You’ve been drinking.”
“So have you. Your cheeks always flush after a few glasses of wine.”
It’s true. I’m prone to flushing. I’m also prone to conspiracy theories and worst-case-scenario thinking, impressively demonstrated by my brain, which is howling that Chris is about to kill me.
He says, “You know how I knew you were sleeping with him? You do this thing when you’re not telling the truth. You glance up and to the right. Just for a second. When I asked you if you were fucking him, that’s what you did.”
That he noticed such a minor tic about me frightens me deeply.
It makes me wonder what else he noticed.
And why he was looking so closely in the first place.
“You’ll notice that I’m not glancing up and to the right now, when I tell you that you’re starting to scare me.”
He was about to take another step forward, but stops dead.
He says vehemently, “I’d never hurt you. Proven by the fact that I didn’t tell the feds I thought you and this Reaper character were involved.” His eyes darken. “Because if I did, you’d be sitting in a black-site military cell right now, in handcuffs, being questioned by a guy named Snakebite who gets off on the sight of blood and the sound of a woman screaming.”
It’s official. Chris has gone off the rails.
“And it’s not me you should be afraid of. I’m just a guy who wants what’s best for you. I can tell you, Nat, with one hundred percent certainty, that what’s best for you isnotKazimir Portnov.”
So he knows Kage’s real name. Hehasfound out about him.
That makes my anxiety explode into panic.
If Kage finds out that Chris went to the feds, and the feds now have eyes on him… maybe he won’t come around here anymore.
Maybe I’ll never see him again.
I’m panicked for the space of a few heartbeats, then I’m consumed by anger.
How dare this guy—who I barely spent a few months with,who I never even screwed—pull this petty, territorial, caveman bullshit.
I step back across the threshold of the open door, grab the shotgun propped up against the wall in the corner, and stand facing Chris with the barrel of the rifle gripped in my left hand, the buttstock resting on the floor.
I say firmly, “This is private property.Myproperty. I’ve already asked you to leave, but you haven’t. So not only are you harassing me and scaring me, you’re trespassing. And considering our past relationship, your obsession with my neighbor, and your history of stalkerish behavior with the constant drive-bys—which I’m sure your boss could track from your phone or the equipment in your squad car if he needed to—it would look very bad for you in front of a jury if I felt compelled to use this weapon.”
His eyes bulge. His face turns red. He sputters, “A-are you th-threatening toshootme?”
“I don’t know, Chris. Check to see if I’m glancing up and to the right.”
After a moment of stunned silence, he says loudly, “You bitch!”
That almost makes me smile. If nothing else, it makes me feel better for going all Rambo on him. “Charming. Now get off my porch before I put a hole in your chest big enough to see daylight through.”
He clenches his fists. Steam billows from his ears. He stands there shaking in rage until he spins on his heel and stalks off, cursing.
I’ve never been much of a gun enthusiast before. I only have the thing because my dad left it behind when he and my mom moved. But right now I’m feeling all sorts of Clint Eastwood tough, and all it took was resting my hand on this weapon.
This weapon that couldn’t blow a hole through anything, human or otherwise, because it isn’t loaded.
